Paradise Lost
by printmaker
Summary: A sheltered kid gets a taste of freedom and finds true love. Or so she thought. All is well in paradise until he decides to act like nothing happened. Coming back home results in a revelation, and the opportunity to become closer to him than ever. AH AU OOC


So, just a few things to get out of the way;

No, I do not own the characters. I'm just playing around with them.

I don't really like when authors ask for a number of reviews before posting the next chapter. While i LOVE reviews, they are not mandatory. However, if you have any questions, comments or just want to chat, please feel free to leave me a review or write me a pm. Know that even though I don't ask for them at the end of every chapter, I appreciate every single one.

Also, I am looking for a beta reader. Please let me know if you would be willing to help.

* * *

I want to talk to him. I need to talk to him. And yet, I don't know what to say.  
I never know what his reaction will be, and I don't like it

Sometimes, I wonder if it's because of something I said, he never says goodbye.  
But I'm afraid to ask. The answer just might be worse than the uneasiness of not knowing.

Without realising, he influences my disposition every time we speak.  
When I'm sad, just two words from him suffice to make me smile.

And no matter how happy I am, inavertedly, he manages to deflate my mood  
and I wonder why I feel the need to be close to him.

I know I shouldn't, he's older. And people wonder  
what it is that he wants from me. What I want from him.

He always feels the need to clarify that the person I met, isn't really him.  
"I didn't drink anything. I didn't take any drugs, either. Just so you know. This isn't Cabo"

He calls me sister, and he's always pointing out the age difference.  
He makes me feel like a little girl, when I haven't felt like one in a long time. Do six years really make that much difference?

And I guess they do. I'm here, going over and over every little detail, overanalysing, while  
he lives his life and goes on like having met me was inconsequential.

Just one more person, a passing face in an ever changing sea of people  
that surround him, the imperceptible shadow of something that could have been, but no one sees

* * *

Looking back to the way things fell into place last year, I should have at least suspected something was going on. It was a stretch that Charlie and Renee would allow me to spend two weeks visiting my cousin Alice during the summer break before my senior year of high school, let alone go practically unsupervised to Mexico with her.

Calling my parents over protective would be an understatement. The house rules while I was growing up went something like 'No sleepovers, no dates, absolutely no boyfriends. No house-parties, no junk food and absolutely no mention of sex, hormones or anything teenaged-girl related'. Trying to sneak out, or lie, or try to convince him otherwise was futile. not even the biggest tantrums when i was a kid helped to change their mind. After all, Charlie had 'been seventeen once and knew what went through seventeen year old boys' heads', and as if that wasn't bad enough, Chief Swan knew exactly what was going on around town and would never let me participate. There really is no point in trying to get your father to let you go to a party, when he's the one who breaks them up every weekend and witnesses underaged drinking in all its glory. In fact, they took the rules so seriously, even they didn't drink. You couldn't find a bottle of beer in the Swan household to save your life.

And to some degree, I could understand. Their life had pretty much been faerie tale material; they were high school sweethearts, their parents had been close friends since pretty much always, they both came from well off families, and they had their whole futures ahead of them.

But then, complications during childbirth meant I would be an only child, when the only thing they wanted more than a baby of their own, was lots of them. They were both only children and had always wanted a large family of their own.

Not two weeks later, they realised that the things their doctor had brushed off, promising they were nothing other than the result of the position of the foetus in the womb weren't going away, and after a slew of doctors appointments and referrals, Charlie and Renee Swan, ended up in California, in the Lucile Packard Children's Hospital in Stanford University for what ended up being exploratory surgery that resulted in a shunt implanted in their six month old baby girl's spine. And that was just the begging of it.

While growing up, I also received treatment for cleft-foot, having both legs forced into the right position with casts that were applied every couple weeks as progress was made, and I spent a year having to use clutches to walk due to a procedure to elongate my left femur because of stunted growth in that leg, and later an Achilles tendon elongation, as well as a knee rotation. I had had more bones broken by doctors, than most people broke by accident their whole lives.

Carlisle Cullen was a young doctor who had recently moved to forks, who after referring my parents to a college friend who made the arrangements for my surgery in California became a close friend of the family, and his wife Esme who was my physiotherapist, became so close to my mother they were practically sisters.

But really, it sounds a lot worse than it actually was. Sure, my life was never 'normal' even though I barely had any limitations as a result of my condition except when I was undergoing treatment, I was healthy and physically able, but it was little things, like not being able to go over to a friend's house after school to do a school project because I had physiotherapy that set me apart from my peers.

Even though everyone at school was nice to me I only really had one friend in Forks. While most kids were trying to get in chief Swan's good graces, Angela Weber was a genuinely nice person. It also didn't hurt that she was minister Weber's daughter which of course made her a suitable friend for me as far as my parents were concerned. It wasn't until I was around nine years old, that I became friends with Jacob Black. While he was always around while growing up, we didn't really bond until his mother left him and his dad, taking his older sister with her. However, Jake lived in the Quileute reservation, so I didn't get to see him as much as I would have liked. But being friends with Jake, afforded me with the chance to act like a normal teenager, because he was a close family friend he knew what i had been through, but also understood that it didn't define me, which meant he treated me like he treated anyone else. If Charlie only knew the stuff Jake and his friends were up to.

Had I been anyone else, being Jake Black's friend would have been enough to make me the most popular girl in school. He was a year older than me, and he somehow managed to get in with the 'cool kids' by the time his freshman year finished, which made him a legend. By the time I made it to high school, every kid in Forks knew who he was, and by the time he was a Senior, he was running the whole thing, and anyone who was friends with him was pretty much royalty. Which meant everyone knew who I was, either because of my father, or my best friend.

People didn't really understand our friendship, he was popular and outgoing, and had tons of friends, and I didn't. While no one ever said anything, I'm pretty sure it didn't help that every single girl I knew and didn't know wanted to get in his pants. They probably all hated me which was stupid, really. All they had to do was ask and I'd tell them it was nothing like that between us. He went out, got his dick wet, had his fun with them, and when he got bored, he came to me. We could spend entire days laying in bed listening to music and not saying anything just as easily as we could talk about anything and everything. Although, it was more like he talked and I listened, I rarely had something new to share. Our friendship was what I imagined a relationship with your big brother would be. He always had good advice when I needed it, and was willing to kick anyone's ass if they messed with me. Somehow, he always knew what I needed, he just got me.


End file.
